News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display.

Re:IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display by mihaic on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:39AM (#39368166)
One of my favorite memories when I was tinkering with DOS was when I discovered that I could change the display from 80x25 to 80x40 (or was it 50? Something with mode con lines=). It felt like a game-changer, especially since I just started to learn Borland Pascal and could now fit so much more text on screen.

I now wonder why working in that mode wasn't more widespread if it was supported.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display by rbanffy on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @06:36AM (#39368705)
The character font wasn't great - it was the same as CGA, mostly.

Actual terminals had finer fonts (and resolutions above the 480 lines of 80x50)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display by SomeoneFromCA on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @05:12AM (#39368317)
80x43 or 80x50
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display by chrisco255 on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:54AM (#39368231)
My guess would be that a lot of apps were probably hard-coded to work with 80x25.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80×24 display by justsomehnguy on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @11:32AM (#39371810)
14" (with 13" visible at best) weren't the best ones for that mode. And yes, while you were in the 80x25 there were no problems, but as soon as anything tried to do something fancy, even just changing the glyphs..

The other problems is the amount of the video RAM, but I'm not ready to check %hat right now.

[ Parent | on HN ]